


Healing

by SatMorningCartoons (SilvaeSong)



Series: Ghost in a Bottle, Baby [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, By angst I mean ANGST, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Minor Character Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilvaeSong/pseuds/SatMorningCartoons
Summary: Give and TakeThe portal gave him powers, so what did it take?How can he fill the hole it leaves behind?





	Healing

**Author's Note:**

> Yo! If you like happy, don't read this. My favorite pastime is torturing characters.
> 
> seriously, i cried
> 
> Oh, and Sam and Tucker aren't a thing in this.

“A ghost!  Run!”

The familiar cry reached Danny’s sensitive ears when he closed his locker, closely followed by a familiar evil cackle.  He weakly thumped his head against the offending school staple, grumbling, “I have a math test in five minutes!”

He glanced down the hall to his left. 

All clear.

He turned to the right.

Not a soul (dead or otherwise) in sight. 

For once, he was glad people avoided him like the plague, and he didn’t have any friends.

Forgoing the usual theatrical battle cry, he shifted, then slowly sank through the floor.

“When I fail math, I’m taking it out of that stupid Box Ghost’s hide.”

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t miss the test, but he was getting detention for being late to class.  He supposed he should thank the Box Ghost for being so easy to beat.  The guy was pathetic.

Which begged the question, how did he always end up back in the human world so quickly with nary a scratch?  Danny had often wondered if there wasn’t more to the Box Ghost than first impressions implied.  He’ll have to ask when he releases him back to the Ghost Zone.

Oh, yes.  The Box Ghost was not going to be released until Danny got payback for that detention.

His foster parents already worried too much without adding another detention to the ever-growing history.  Not that Danny particularly cared what they thought, but he didn’t want to disappoint Jazz, especially not so soon after the accident.

See, Jazz and Danny’s parents had been scientists.  ‘Had been’ because they died when Danny made a very stupid decision.  His parents built a ghost portal, but it didn’t quite work, so Danny took a look inside of it.  Big mistake.  He accidentally hit the ‘on’ button.  In his defense, what kind of idiot puts the ‘on’ switch on the inside of a device designed to tear a hole in the fabric of reality? 

His parents, apparently.

When the portal activated, his body was flooded with ectoenergy.  Since he had grown up constantly exposed to the stuff, he had apparently built up an immunity to ectoplasmic energy.  This meant that Danny was able to absorb the energy, adapt to it, ultimately altering his body on a genetic level. 

He only discovered this later.  He came to after the blast, and his house was gone.  His parents had been in the kitchen, his mother trying to cheer up his father with fudge, hoping to take his mind off the failed portal.

Now his kitchen was a smoking pile of rubble. 

Luckily, Jazz had been tutoring outside the house at the time, so she was okay, but no one could understand how Danny had survived.  The portal had collapsed, but Danny had escaped it before he was trapped in the limbo between earth and the Ghost Zone.  After he discovered his powers, he realized he must have instinctually made himself intangible to avoid the explosion of equipment. 

He could tell that the tear in reality was still there.  It was like the hole was covered in mashed potatoes, you couldn’t just walk through it, but if you pushed, it would give, and you could slide through, the hole closing up again behind you.  Nothing had been built there yet, it was only a month after the accident, after all, so he could still access the dimensional breach.  He used his newfound abilities and the Fenton tech that survived the explosion to hunt down the ghosts that found their way through the portal, tossing their ecto-butts back into the Ghost Zone. 

Naturally, his sister had no clue.  She had realized that Danny blamed himself for the accident, but she didn’t know why.  How could a teenage boy be responsible for a gas leak in the lab he avoided like the plague?  Her parents’ silly rants about ghosts seemed less stupidly embarrassing, and more endearing after a gas leak blew them out of her life.  She knew Danny was struggling, but when she tried to help, he always pushed her away.  She didn’t know that the authorities were wrong.  She didn’t know that it wasn’t a simple gas leak, but how could he possibly tell the one family member that he had left, the only person in this big, bad world who he genuinely cared for, that he had killed their parents?

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m home.”  Danny mumbled, shutting the front door behind him.  Jazz tackled him from where she had been pacing the living room floor. 

“Danny!  I was so worried!  You wouldn’t answer your phone, and I didn’t know where you were!  Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”  she sobbed into his neck, squeezing him so tightly that it was a good thing he didn’t need to breathe as often as he used to.

He shrugged.  “It’s kinda hard to answer the phone in detention, Jazz.”

She released him to glare questioningly.

He glared right back.

“Danny--“

“Just stop, Jazz!” 

Both of them seemed a little surprised at his outburst.  Sarah, their foster mother, paused, her hand on the door from the kitchen.  She hated to eavesdrop like this, but she wanted to help, and she could only do that by knowing what the boy needed.

“I don’t need your help.”  Jazz wilted at her brother’s words.  “I don’t need you worrying over me, talking to me, or trying to fill the gap mom and dad left.” 

Sarah jumped when the door she had leaned her head on was suddenly opened, an angry teenage boy frowning up at her.

“And I especially don’t need pity parties and empty words from anyone else.” He growled as he brushed passed the woman, grabbing an apple as he stalked through the kitchen towards his room.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m sorry!  I won’t come back during school hours ever again!”  the Box Ghost cried, trying to avoid the punches Danny was throwing. 

“How about you DON’T COME BACK AT ALL!” Danny yelled, landing a right hook to the jaw, sending the Box Ghost spiraling further into the Ghost Zone.  Satisfied, Danny headed back towards the exit, keeping an eye out for any other ghosts.

When he exited the tear, he was surprised to see men in white suits all over the ruins of the lab.  He wasn’t worried about them taking anything, he had already cleaned out everything, but he didn’t like the guns pointed at him.

“Hey, whoa, I’m not doing anything!  Don’t shoot!”  He yelled, holding his hands up to show he meant no harm.

“You deserve to be shot for merely existing, ecto-scum!”  One guy countered.

_‘Oh joy, they’re fanatics like my— ‘_

His thoughts were cut short when guns started firing at him.

 

* * *

 

 

After narrowly escaping, Danny made it back to the Rockbells’.  He was grateful that they were doctors.  It made it easier to deal with his injuries from ghost hunting.

He wasn’t so grateful for his sister’s lack of respect for his privacy.

He had just phased through the wall into his room, reverting back to his human side and clutching a large wound on his arm where a bullet did more than graze, when the light was flicked on.  Jazz stood in the doorway, a look of shock and terror on her face.

Well, he’s screwed.

“D-Danny?  What happened?”

_‘Did she see me phase through the wall?  How will I explain my injuries?  I’m so busted!’_

“Uhhh………….”  He would have come up with a great excuse, he was sure, but her next words brought him up short.

“What _really_ happened the day the house exploded?”

Maybe it was the blood loss, or the exhaustion, or maybe it was the knowledge that _SHE SAW HIM_ , but whatever the reason, he couldn’t answer because he passed out, falling to the floor.  Jazz dove to catch him, internally freaking out, but cool as a cucumber to those still conscious.  She could freak out later when her little brother wasn’t bleeding out on the floor.

An hour later of sweating, praying, and (she will never admit it) swearing, she had done all she could, which was a lot, considering she had passed that first aid class with flying colors and was in a doctor’s house.  Every injury was tended to, Danny lying in bed, still dead to the world.

She had several theories on her brother.  Unfortunately, she had ruled all but one possibility out.  “ _After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”_   She mumbled.  Sherlock was, no matter how much she wished he wasn’t, dead right on this one.  Her brother must have died in that accident.  Not fully, she knew that much.  He wouldn’t be breathing if he had fully died and stayed dead.  Thus, he must be half dead.  She groaned, her head falling into her hands.  Her brother was Schrödinger’s cat.  She glanced up at him through her hands.  He had messed with the Ghost Portal and it worked, but not the way they wanted it to.

She felt the tears run down her cheeks when she realized that her brother was blaming himself for their parents’ deaths.  He had been pushing her away because he was scared.  Why wouldn’t he be?  He was now the very thing that they were told all their lives was evil incarnate.  She hit the floor, sobbing when it hit her.

He thought he was a monster.

That was why he had been so reckless since the accident.  His personality had done a one eighty, creating a devil-may-care attitude overnight, because he thought he really was a devil.

She sat up, shakily wiping her eyes as dry as she could make them.  When had her brother decided that she wouldn’t trust him?  When had he stopped trusting her?  Was it all because of the accident, or had she done something?  Was this all her fault?  With that thought, the waterworks started up again.

On the other side of the room, lying in his bed, Danny stirred, instantly regretting it when his arm screamed in protest.  He needed to bandage it qui--. 

He stared at the neatly wrapped bullet wound. 

Never mind.

_‘Did Jazz do this?’_

Quiet crying drew his attention to the corner.  He would recognize those sniffles anywhere, they had been coming from the room next to his for the past month nearly every night. 

“Jazz?”

The orange-haired teen gasped, whipping her head towards him so quickly he was afraid she might accidently snap her own neck from the force.

“D-Dan-n-ny, I-I’m s-so-o s-sor-r-ry!”  she bawled, throwing herself at the foot of his bed, babbling into the sheets, “I-it’s a-all m-my f-fault!  If-if I had b-b-been a b-b-bet-ter sist-ter then— “

“Jazz, calm down, it’s alright!  I’m just fine thanks to you.”  He panicked when she just seemed to cry harder.

“I d-don’t m-mean the injur-injuries.  I mean al-all o-of it!  The portal, wh-what it d-did t-to y-you….”

She trailed off, but Danny was no longer listening. 

_‘She knows.  She knows, and that’s why she’s crying.  You did that to her, Danny.’_

“Jazz, you didn’t do anyth—“  he tried, but she cut him off.

“That’s the problem!”  She seemed to be over her tears and was getting angry.  Danny gulped. 

This is it.  This is when he loses it all.

“I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.  You couldn’t trust me.”  The anger faded, and she just looked drained.  “I did this to you.  Not the ghost thing, but the getting hurt and being alone part.  The part that’s hurting you is all my fault.”

Danny sighed.  “Actually, the getting hurt was thanks to some government agents at the house, but,”  he stopped, and a ghost of a smile flitted onto his face, tears forming in his eyes,  “thanks, Jazz.”

Jazz pulled him into a hug, and they stayed there for a while, content to share each other’s tears for a while.

The healing had begun.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I'd say I won't do it again, but we all know that's a lie. I'll probably add a sequel.
> 
> If you got the references in there, applause.
> 
> #sorrynotsorry


End file.
